Gaining Wings
by sheneya
Summary: Inspired by the prompt: Sherlock is on the side of the angels, but he isn't one of them - literally. He is a demon who has decided, for whatever reason, to change sides on sherlockbbc-fic on LJ Contains Mild Slash implications and spoilers for season 2 All episodes, Just in case
1. Chapter 1

The first angel Sherlock ever come close to was an older man holding a police badge, at the time he had hair that was just silvering along the sides, a kind, but tired look in eyes that crinkled slightly at the edges and dusty, blue-grey wings.

Sherlock was using his charm and looks on a young girl he'd deduced as a runaway, she was probably barely legal and he was offering her a straw and her choice of long white lines along glass table tops, it was an elaborate trap that if it had worked, would have compounded the guilt and fear, until she felt too desperate to get back in contact with the people she knew before eventually tearing her away from her family completely.

With a few kind words and gentle hands, the angel had managed to usher the girl out of his carefully set trap and eventually back home to a worried mother without resorting to the standard kill the demon from a long distance tactic most angels used when they sensed him.

Both angry and surprised, Sherlock confronted the angel and demanded an explanation and a name.

The angel pierced him with kinder eyes than any other angel he'd met before.

"Lestrade, killing anything for no reason, even a demon like yourself is a waste, for all your elaborate designs, sometimes all it take is a few kind words and a shoulder to lean on to turn people from a dark path."

Sherlock stared as the angel ... Lestrade ... walked away, still making no attempt to execute him or force him back into hell.

Rather stupidly, as there was a strong chance Lestrade would suddenly change his mind and remove him, Sherlock asked him why.

"You seem interesting."


	2. Gaining Wings 2

The second angel Sherlock met up close was a small restaurant owner, For all his craggy looks, the angel's name seemed to fit his existence far more easily than Lestrade's.

Angelo.

Angelo the angel.

Angelo the angel who was currently trying to take the rap for some idiot thief who had managed to panic and get himself in over his head.

Sherlock wasn't 100% sure why he decided to prove Angelo's innocence, maybe to get the angel to suffer losing his charge, maybe he was just bored, so many maybes.

Instead, despairingly, he ended up both guaranteeing Angelo's freedom and accidentally saving the young thief from turning into an alcoholic before finally self-destructing with guilt and a hangman's noose.

he resolutely ignored the slightly warm feeling blossoming in his chest, discounting it as a tiny attack from the weakest hellfire of the realms.

He also decided to ignore the fact that his investigation of on Mr Hudson had something to do with the weak hellfire feeling that Mrs Hudson's relieved smile gave him.


	3. Chapter 3

The third angel Sherlock met was a timid morgue technician by the name of Molly.

As angel's went she wasn't high up in the rankings ladder, indeed she was more or less a gentle-looking ferryman, she was masquerading as a mortician solely for the purpose of encouraging lost souls that didn't want to move on from their bodies to go into the afterlife.

While most people saw her as a weak girl who let Sherlock walk all over her, in fact any corpse she did loan him, was only parted with once she was sure the soul had moved on.

Sherlock learned the hard way what happened the first and last time he tried to borrow a cadaver with it's soul still attached.

She, like Lestrade and Angelo, were very much into the not killing unless necessary, that didn't stop her from zapping him hard enough to see stars and leaving him with blisters in uncomfortable places that didn't disappear for a week.

He never asked her again.


	4. Chapter 4

Then there was John.

At first, John didn't even register as an angel, he was a short, stocky man with PTSD, an alcoholic sister and trust issues.

Basically, he was what used to be perfect prey for Sherlock.

but for some reason, knowing Lestrade, Angelo and Molly had made him less inclined to go after prey, he was sure there was probably something wrong with him now.

Instead, Sherlock invited the former soldier to move in as flatmate.

It wasn't until he'd accidentally walked in on the man showering, that he noticed the small wings that barely sprouted from his back.

When he'd asked, John just looked at him with confusion before asking him what he was talking about.

It took a while for Sherlock to realise, John didn't know he was an angel.

It took even longer for him to get Lestrade alone and ask him how John couldn't know.

"A Rebirth."

Sherlock's confusion must have been clear as the now almost entirely silvered detective decided to elaborate.

"A Rebirth is someone who died doing something incredibly brave or good and was brought into angel-hood, often it can take many years before they even realise what they are, it's less traumatising that way."

While he was still confused, Sherlock knew that was probably the best explanation he was going to get.

He was surprised at how it all ended up.


	5. Chapter 5

As the beginning started with Lestrade, the beginning of the end started with Moriarty.

Moriarty was a demon most lesser demons aspired to become, the elegant corrupter, the venomous king in a poison crown, his quota of corrupted souls was longer than almost anyone besides Lucifer himself and his criminal empires and promises to fix any problem kept that list growing.

And, as his seeming relationship with Molly proved, he was also the well hidden darkness.

Even Sherlock didn't recognize his true face until they met at the pool.

Strangely, it was Moriarty's attempts to bring Sherlock back into hell's arms that ended up pushing him into John's.

The tiring pursuit of the genius bomber that cost dozens of lives, was going to end in the climactic demise of John Watson.

Brave Watson, good, kind Watson.

Watson who didn't know he was an angel yet, who even Moriarty didn't even know was an angel yet.

Only Sherlock and Lestrade knew that little tidbit, and there was no way in hell, figuratively speaking, that Sherlock was going to let Moriarty gain to notoriety of bagging an angel, baby one though he may be.

forget that, there was no way Moriarty was getting his hands on Sherlock's John.

So instead of in triumph, Moriarty left empty handed.

Not that Sherlock believed he would stay away.

Jim didn't accept failure easily.


	6. Chapter 6

Irene Adler was no angel, she was no demon either, for all her beauty and attitude, she was just a human, admittedly she was a cusp, someone who was finely balanced between good and evil, and who could end up either way, but she was still just a human.

She was also the catalyst for Sherlock's first meeting with his older brother in ages.

Mycroft was a demon who, the last time Sherlock met him was finding his souls in wars, playing a low level bureaucrat or minor official, he was the demon who whispered into someones ear, that person then whispered into someone else's ear, and so on, until the whisper reached the ears of someone who decided to declare war.

You might think war wasn't the best way collect souls, but in fact because while war created people like John, it also made people choose the other direction.

Some soldiers became hero's that saved many lives, others ended up delving into terrible things like torture.

The deliberate infliction of pain on innocent people was a one way trip to hell, and every tainted soul from the wars Mycroft created went directly to him.

It was strange seeing his brother after so long, and Mycroft seemed different from what Sherlock was used to.

His desire to stop Irene Adler was also very out of character, letting the woman use those pictures to blackmail someone would push her off the cusp and towards hell, it wasn't a fail-safe drop, but it did give the demons the higher ground, something which would have rewarded Mycroft very well indeed.

Instead he seemed to be wanting her to remain at the very least a cusp, or even pushing her over to the angel's side.

It didn't take long to realise Moriarty was using her infatuation with Sherlock to pull her into his clutches.

To Sherlock, that explained Mycroft's odd behaviour right away.

Mycroft and Moriarty's feud had been going on longer than Sherlock could remember, stopping Moriarty from claiming Irene Adler, was almost as good as winning her soul for himself.


	7. Chapter 7

After the incident with Henry Knight, what Sherlock had thought might be an escaped hell-hound, turned out to be just a dog and some hulucenogenic gas.

Sherlock was on edge, aside from the thing with Irene, Moriarty hadn't really approached Sherlock since the pool, he wouldn't wait much longer.

When Moriarty did finally come for Sherlock again, it was in the most spectacular way, high-level break-ins and deliberately allowing himself to be arrested then released, Moriarty proceeded to spin an epic story to a rather dim reporter, culminating in Sherlock being a terrible villain.

While standard demonic fare of separating the intended victim from all support, Moriarty pulled it off with the foul grace that made him Satan's favourite.

Without John, Sherlock had no doubt he would have returned to his old ways, maybe even become worse, instead he was fighting to keep John safe and happy.

But with every judgement and every dark look he was pierced with as the list of his faked crimes became longer, John stayed by his side.

Even Molly, Angelo and Lestrade stood by him, even during his arrest they believed him, Lestrade's part in it didn't hide his belief that Sherlock was as innocent as a demon could be.

But all things must end.

He was on a roof top with Moriarty, The other demon trying everything in his power to entice Sherlock back to their side.

Sherlock stood firm, his assured nature saying more than any words he might have said to Moriarty, he said them anyway.

"I'm on the side of the angels."

In one last attempt to reclaim him, Moriarty threatened to have the people he cared about killed, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, John.

But the other demon knew it was a futile gesture when Sherlock first tried to bring Moriarty down.

So instead Moriarty faked his own death in one desperate attempt to make Sherlock's friends disappear.

As Sherlock watched false blood spill out of a facade, he knew in order to save his friends he had to die a traitor's death.

It wasn't as hard for a demon to die, he knew as soon as his head hit the ground, he would be carted to hell and imprisoned in it's deepest pits for betraying his contract.

It didn't matter, John would be safe, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Molly even Angelo would be safe.

But first he had to make John believe Sherlock had been playing them all.

It was harder than he thought, and in the end he failed, even as he was stretching out his arms on the edge of a building, John refused to believe the words he was saying.

Even as he plummeted down, John's voice was singing that he, Sherlock was on the side of the angels.

Even as he felt the warmth, like he was being dipped in the sun-warmed ocean, John's love echoed through him.

even as he welcomed death, he woke up in Molly's morgue.

Molly was smiling at him as Lestrade walked into the room with Mycroft just behind him holding a bag of Angelo's food.

Sherlock did a double take as he saw the feathered wings unfurling along his older brother's spine.

"What...How...Those are angel wings."

Sherlock nearly fainted as the mirror Molly was holding showed the small, small wings, tinier than even John's sprouting just between his shoulders.

Looking again at his brother, Sherlock was shocked the see him snuggling into Lestrade's side.

"Lestrade was once a Rebirth, so was Molly, Rebirth's have one unique quality that no born angel can obtain, because they don't judge, because they don't know, they can love a demon without it being tainted by the eyes of heaven."

Molly was the one who piped up next.

"A loved demon is very rare, and while it doesn't always work, if the demon responds to love with love, he can obtain a rare gift."

There was a sad look in Molly's eyes.

"Moriarty, you love Moriarty."

Tears ran down Molly's face.

"Yes, and I don't think I can ever stop trying to get him to love me."

Finally Lestrade looked up from where his hands where running along Mycroft's back.

"That's why she's never been promoted, she won't give up on what's been considered a hopeless case by most of heaven."

Sherlock looked at his new wings before turning to Lestrade.

"John?"

"You can't go back yet, John still doesn't know."

"But soon, I can come back soon."

"Eventually you can come back."

"Good, that's good I just need to do one more thing."


	8. Epilogue

It was a few days later that he watched John in the graveyard, Mrs Hudson was a surprise as well.

Sherlock watched as John cried for another miracle, his love for Sherlock still strong even though Sherlock had done everything to break it.

But now Sherlock was glad.

"Just wait a little longer John, just a little longer, I'm on the side of the angels now, literally, and we make miracles."

Sherlock watched as John and Mrs Hudson walked out of the cemetery, before turning around and going in the other direction.

"John's miracle will take a while, but it's not the only miracle to work on, lets see if I can't give dear Molly her very own miracle... Moriarty, here I come."


End file.
